The Locked Porch

In the summer of 2011, I was fourteen, living in a cramped apartment above my father’s barbershop in the town of Millbrook. My mother worked nights at the hospital, and my father, though he claimed to have given up his old night shifts, still kept odd hours. That particular evening, the air was thick and humid, and the smell of rain hung heavy. My mother had left us a casserole, and my father was late, so my younger brother, Liam, and I ate alone. The apartment was quiet, save for the hum of the old refrigerator and the occasional clatter from the street below.

My mother had a habit of keeping a case of root beer in the trunk of her car, because the refrigerator was too small. As the evening wore on, she called, asking me to run down and grab a bottle for her, as she was craving one after her shift. I hesitated. The last two nights, when I had gone down to the car, the door to our apartment had refused to open when I returned. It wasn’t locked; the knob would turn, but the latch wouldn’t catch. Both times, I had to knock and pound until one of my parents let me in, and they swore they hadn’t locked it. The first time, my father had checked the door and found it unlocked, and we had laughed it off as a sticky lock. But the second night, my mother grew uneasy, saying the place felt ‘off’. She had always been superstitious, but never scared. That night, she had lit a candle at the kitchen table, muttering something about ‘keeping the bad spirits away’.

So, I asked Liam to come with me. He was twelve, and he rolled his eyes but agreed, more interested in the possibility of sneaking a sip of root beer. We went down the narrow, dimly lit stairwell, through the back exit that led to the parking lot behind the building. The car was an old Buick, and the trunk creaked when we opened it. Liam grabbed the bottle, and we headed back. The summer night was thick, and the streetlights cast long, distorted shadows. When we reached the door, I turned the knob – it turned freely – but the door wouldn’t budge. I pushed, I rattled, but it was as if an invisible force held it shut from the other side. Panic rose in my chest, and my heart began to pound.

Liam, always the practical one, said, ‘Maybe it’s just jammed. Let’s try the front entrance.’ Our apartment had two doors: the kitchen door at the back, which we always used, and a seldom-used front door that opened onto the main street. We circled around to the front, and that door too refused to open. Same thing: knob turned, but no give. I knocked, hard, and my mother’s voice came from inside, muffled but clear: ‘It’s not locked! Just pull it!’ I yelled back, ‘It won’t open!’ I heard her footsteps, then her hands on the other side of the door, and she grunted as she tried to push it open. A moment later, her voice came through, strained: ‘I can’t get it open either. It’s like something’s holding it.’

We stood there, the three of us separated by a thin wooden door that had become an unsolvable barrier. I saw Liam’s face in the dim light, his eyes wide. My mother’s voice, from inside, was shaky: ‘Try the back door again. Maybe the latch is just sticky.’ But we had already tried. Defeated, we walked back to the rear door, and as we approached, I could have sworn I saw the curtains in the kitchen window flutter, even though the window was closed. This time, when I reached the door, I didn’t bother to turn the knob. I just pushed, and it swung open easily, as if nothing had been wrong. My mother stood in the doorway, her face pale, holding the candle that she had lit earlier. She looked at us, then at the door, and whispered, ‘It’s not the house. It’s something else.’ She closed the door and locked it, something she never did.

That night, we didn’t talk much. But the following morning, I noticed a faint scratch mark on the inside of the back door, low down, like someone had tried to claw their way in. My father claimed it had always been there, but I knew better. And from that night on, every time we left the apartment, one of us would stay behind, holding the door open, lest it lock us out again. But it never happened again, not to us. Yet, sometimes, I still dream of that door, and in the dream, I’m on the outside, and I can see my own face peering out at me from the window, but the expression is wrong – it’s a smile, and I know it’s not me. I’ve never been able to tell that to anyone, not even to my mother, because what would I say – that the door didn’t just lock us out, but something took our place inside? The house has its secrets, and that porch, that door, it remembers.